iTunes sales tanking? Not according to my simple little blog statistics which, unlike Forrester, costs nothing to read.

Home > Of things Mac > iTunes sales tanking? Not according to my simple little blog statistics which, unlike Forrester, costs nothing to read.

iTunes sales tanking? Not according to my simple little blog statistics which, unlike Forrester, costs nothing to read.

Date Created: 26 Dec, 2006, 05:42 PM

... and a warm Holiday Season's Greetings to one and all.

And to the many new owners of iPods and iTunes cards by which to fill those iPods!

Because I'm guessing Apple sold HUGE numbers of each. And it won't surprise me to hear Steve Jobs at his Keynote in a few weeks describe these sales as stupendous, although the final sales figures may need a few more months to be calculated.

I will be very surprised if in the opening few minutes of his keynote, when he usually gives a retail update, that Steve doesn't talk about the iTunes store, especially given the fallout from the Forrester story in recent weeks. You know, the one which was interpreted as saying digital music sales through iTunes was tanking.

My small space on the internet says exactly the opposite. Which small space is that, you say?

Well, it's the blog you're reading now, and how people came here.

Let me explain.

Perhaps you've come here because you saw this blog entry mentioned on Macsurfer.com or it was picked up by one of the blogs that regularly links to me. (Hopefully, by now, regular readers will have cottoned on to my blogging philosophy of having something to say before putting fingers to keyboard, rather than babbling on for the sake of keeping RSS-subscribers happy).

In which case, when I go looking at the stats for the site supplied free by Sitemeter.com, I can see where readers clicked to get to the blog.

A "hot" blog entry posted on Macsurfer will usually see it occupying 90 out of the most recent 100 entries, which is the maximum the free sitemeter service allows me to see at any one time. I can also see the link that people clicked on to enter the site, which is a nifty way to see who's linking to you.

In the quiet times between blog entries, when the Macsurfer linking drops to zero, 95% of the links come from Google, where in their search for something specific, readers have located a blog link in their search, sufficiently on-topic to entice them to click through to my site. I get to see the site too, by clicking it in the search stats page I can access, whereby I can see the search term used, what other "hits" popped up on Google, and in what order my site was listed.

Take a look below to see a screenshot of one collection of 20 recent searches where people clicked through to come to this site:

(If you click on the image, it will enlarge for a better view)

Now take a look at entries 61, 64, 70, 71, 73, 77, and 78.

7 out of 20 searches on Google that came to my site were about using iTunes Music cards.

That's because one of my previous blog entries was about how I used an iTunes music card from an Apple store in Orange County, LA, to open up a US iTunes account, when I visited LA before last year's CES in Las Vegas (January, 2005, almost two years ago). You can read that link here.

In that blog entry, I detailed how to use the card with the then-iTMS to gain credit for future purchases. These cards are ideal of course for anyone who does not possess a credit card which presents more difficulties to a greater proportion of Americans than it does Australian citizens. I'm guessing, having seen Babel last night (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett), that America may wll have more illegal aliens who cannot obtain credit than we have here. And of course, more young people who also cannot obtain credit and who can simply head in to a store and buy iTunes cards.

This is the first time I have seen this kind of action on my website, and of course, some of it is due to the longevity of my blog entry about the iTunes cards, and how often it's been accessed via Google. The longer it's been active and linked to, the more likely it is to come up in a Google search's first page when people use search terms like "iTunes pre-paid card".

Indeed, looking through the results, it generally comes up fifth, while the top hit is the official one of Apple's, entitled "Apple - Support - iTunes Store - iTunes Music Card FAQ, which you can view here.

So, I'm guessing - interpolating - these cards were huge stocking-stuffers this year, and perhaps many people were "gifted" with the less expensive iPods, like Shuffles and Nanos, together with iTunes cards. And many of these lucky recipients were first time users of said iPods and cards, since they had a sufficiently hard time understanding how to add credit to their accounts (or even to open one) such that they had to resort to the collective wisdom of the crowd and ask Google for help.

Me, since I'm outside the US at the moment and can't access a US Store (local sellers' cards are for the Aussie iTunes store for which I also have an account - thank you Apple for fast multi-user switching in OS X), added more to my US dotmac account by having a friend in New York with an account "gift me" via email and for which I will make payment via my PayPal account. See the illustration at the top left of the blog.

So much for restricting digital sales by territory. It's as dead in the water as zone coding is for DVDs. Another way the middle men are brushed aside in the growing antagonism between consumer and corporate control-freak. Well, at least local middle men, since the US-based ones will still get their cut.

Now I realise counting Google search entries is hardly the most scientific way of analysing datapoints. But nevertheless when there is a sudden surge of entries all asking the same fundamental question - How do I use iTunes cards - one could either think Apple's done something wrong in making their use more difficult this year (I don't think so!) or many more people are now accessing iTunes Store with the new iPods because of being gifted these cards for the first time.

Whatever the case, I'm more likely to back my judgment that the iTunes store continues to gain in popularity and market share, than believe interpreters of expensive analyst reports, who continue to act like vultures at the first sign of weakness (the next iPod killer which never comes), and who this time got it so wrong.